W. C a r e w H a z l i t t Coinage of the European Continent

506 The Coins of Eiirope
of that strange Mohammedan political era which had its
precedent and parallel in the Arabian domination in Sicily.
But in the Iberian Peninsula the influence proved far more
powerful and prolonged, and even when the actual authority
of the Moorish Kings of Granada was extinguished some
years after the union of Castile and Arragon under Ferdinand
and Isabella, the former masters of the country left their
enduring impress on its people, its language, and its architecture.
The Moors or Mauritanians were the makers of
Spain. Of their predecessors there are no numismatic or
other monuments of any importance. The Suevic and Visigothic
coinages are probably the most barbarous in point of
style ever produced within the confines of Europe, and do
not seem to have undergone any improvement during the
period of that rule over parts of Spain. They exhibit the
principles of medallic art reduced to their rudiments, and
form a powerful contrast to that of the Ostrogoths, of which
some of the later examples, after the renunciation of imperial
names and busts, are highly creditable and interesting, and
indicate the employment of skilful engravers, more likely to
have been Greeks than Italians. We shall perhaps never
arrive at an exact knowledge of the reasons or circumstances
which exercised on bodies of settlers of cognate origin such
divergent effects ;
but it is
presumable that, while in Spain
the influence and traditions of the old Hellenic culture had
completely expired, the Gothic conquerors of Italy enjoyed
the advantage of the Indo-Greek civilisation, of which we
discover such early traces at Venice, and of which the
Byzantine jurisdiction over Ravenna and Naples, concurrently
with that of foreign invaders elsewhere, favoured the growth
and establishment.
The Visigothic series, chiefly confined to gold trientes,
at first of imperial, and subsequently of independent, types,
extends from the sixth to the eighth century. The mints
are Barcelona, Toulouse, Narbonne, Emerita, and Toledo.
There also exist of the later rulers small silver coins, probably
the tenth of the triens, of inferior workmanship to the
latter, but of similar type. The moneyers engaged evidently